


made for loving

by waveydnp



Series: alittlewavey [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Established Relationship, Haircuts, Hands, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-08 16:46:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14109699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveydnp/pseuds/waveydnp
Summary: phil has shaky hands. and a new haircut





	made for loving

**Author's Note:**

> part 1 of alittlewavey :) go read mandy's shaky hands fic [a map to the lost](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14110950)

Phil has shaky hands. They’ve always been that way, and usually he doesn’t even notice it. It’s just a slight tremor, he’d been told by his doctor as a child. Nothing to worry about. He’ll never be a surgeon or a tattoo artist, but luckily that hasn’t ever been a crushing blow to his hopes or dreams.

His hands are big. They’re big and soft and gentle. They’re hands made for loving, his mum had told him once, after he’d gotten into a fight with a bully at school. He’d tried to throw a punch, to return the violence thrust upon him, but he’d missed the boy’s face and crunched his knuckles into the rough brick of the outside of the library.

He’d cried when she’d asked him what happened, why his fist was bloody and his cheek was red beneath his tears.

“Your hands are made for loving, Philip,” she’d said, “not fighting.”

She’d been right of course. She’s always right. His hands are made for loving, and they’re damn good at it.

At least, Dan says they are. No one besides his mum had ever really told him anything like that, but Dan does. Dan always has, because Phil’s hands have been loving Dan since the very first time they touched him, at the train station in Manchester all those years ago.

His hands had been shaking then, a lot more than a slight tremor. They’d been practically vibrating with nerves and excitement and the force of how badly he wished they wouldn’t. Dan had seemed so calm, so sure of himself. He admitted later that he wasn’t, he really wasn’t, that he was a mess, he was just better at hiding it.

Phil’s not so good at hiding it, usually. Because his hands are shaky.

Like now, now as he sits in this leather chair with a cape wrapped around his shoulders and watches little tufts of black hair floating to the ground from where they’re being cut away from his beloved fringe. 

Maybe not so beloved anymore. Maybe not for a while, really. Maybe at some point beloved became begrudged, and he’s only just now had the courage to tell the hairdresser to cut it away. And maybe only because it’s a new hairdresser.

He’s not in his kitchen, chatting with Fabrice and telling him all the good stories before it’s Dan’s turn. He’s in a proper salon with someone new, someone who doesn’t really know him at all, someone who has no idea what it means that he’s taking his scissors so liberally to a piece of Phil’s branding. It really does feel like he’s cutting away an integral part of AmazingPhil, like he’s stripping away a layer of persona Phil’s spent over a decade carefully cultivating. 

And his bloody hands are shaky. Luckily, they’re hidden under the cape, so he doesn’t think this new guy can see. But still they shake, and Phil can feel that nervous twitchy energy travelling up his arms and into his chest, where his heart is beating much faster than it should be for what this is -- a freaking haircut. It’s just a haircut.

He clasps them together, because it’s all he can do. It’s the next best thing to feeling Dan’s big strong hands on his, long fingers slipping between his and holding them steady. He can have that later, once they’re both freshly trimmed and safe back home, away from prying eyes and the buzz of the clippers. 

Dan sits in his own chair now, with his own hairdresser on the other side of the room. They can’t even speak to each other and Phil kind of wishes he hadn’t suggested this. He wishes he was back in the kitchen with Fabrice. He wishes he knew exactly what to expect when he looked in the mirror.

“A quiff,” he’d replied simply when asked earlier what kind of style he was looking for, as if he hadn’t been agonizing over this decision for weeks. For months.

As ridiculous as even Phil admits it is, Dan putting that single silver hoop in his ear had been the last straw. His constant talk lately about ‘living his truth’ and ‘finding what makes him happy’ and trying to be ‘authentic’ has been sitting heavy in Phil’s mind every morning as he sits on their bed and watches himself in the mirror, watches himself drag straighteners through his fringe, styling it into something he really should have outgrown a long time ago.

Watching Queer Eye definitely hadn’t helped quell the feeling he needed to make a change, but seeing Dan do something as simple as wearing a hoop earring -- something he’d been talking about doing for ages and ages and only just now done -- had flipped a switch inside Phil’s brain. 

Maybe the truth is that he’s been clinging to this outdated hairstyle for the wrong reasons. A lot of wrong reasons. Maybe the truth that he’s been living is that he’s afraid of change. He’s afraid of appearing older, as he thinks he does when his fringe is pushed back. He’s afraid of looking different than he has in nearly every single video he’s been in since he started his channel. He’s afraid of change, even if that change means moving towards something that feels more authentically himself. 

Because actually, he and Dan have spent a lot of years making sure that who they really are remains hidden. Dan’s not always very good at it, but Phil is. Phil is almost too good at it, to the point that now, when he actually wants to take a step away from the persona, he finds it bloody terrifying. 

It scares him when he looks in the mirror and sees his forehead. Just so much forehead, and the lines that form in it when he raises his eyebrows. He doesn’t look like AmazingPhil, but he does look like Phil. He wonders when that will stop feeling so scary.

“It looks good,” Dan assures him. At the salon, and then on the tube and then at home. He keeps leaning into Phil’s space and telling him how good it looks.

Which is well and truly ridiculous as Phil actually spends a lot of his life with his fringe pushed back. He wakes up with a quiff every morning, and usually ends the day with one too. If they’re not leaving the house he never bothers to take the straighteners to it. Dan knows what he looks like with his hair like this.

But obviously he also knows how nervous Phil is, because this isn’t just a lazy day at home, this is his hair now. Millions and millions of people are going to see him with this hair. They’re going to judge him for it, which Phil pretends not to care about that much. But it’s a lot more than that. This is going to be his hair now, and Dan knows him well enough to know that a change like this is about more than just hair. Dan knows what it represents, all the layers of significance it holds for Phil.

It means moving towards transparency, or at least whatever version of that they’re comfortable with right now. It’s a bumpy road -- the past few weeks have proven that. But still he feels he has to try. They both do, because they want to be able to live their truth someday, properly. 

Phil stands in front of the mirror, inspecting himself in a way he hadn’t had the courage to do at the salon. He raises his eyebrows and watches his forehead crinkle. “I look old.”

“You look hot,” Dan corrects.

“I don’t look like me.”

Dan comes up behind him, wraps his arms around Phil’s waist and digs his chin into Phil’s shoulder. “You look exactly like you.”

“You know what I mean.” He’s trying not to smile, but he already feels better. He can do this if Dan is here with him. He can do this because Dan is changing too. They’re changing together. 

“I know what you mean,” Dan says, tilting his head and kissing Phil’s neck. “I just think you’re wrong.”

Phil’s hands are shaky later, as he tries to take a selfie. He holds the phone at a million different angles, turns his head this way and that. He tries smiling, and frowning, even pouting his lips out a tiny bit, but it’s no use apparently. His hands shake and his photos look like shit.

Dan takes pity on him eventually. He tells Phil where to look, how to hold his head. Phil feels like a idiot preening like this, but Dan just tells him to shut up and make his best sexy face.

Dan’s photos are better. Much better. Phil swipes through them and though he’s slightly mortified at this display of shameless vanity in his camera roll, he can’t deny it makes him feel better.

Dan takes the phone back and points out one of the photos and says, “This one. This is the one.”

Phil frowns. “I look too… moody.”

“You look hot, Phil. Just accept it. You’ve got like, a fwiff. Like a Zayn level fwiff.”

Phil rolls his eyes fondly. He wonders if Dan knows just how much compliments like that still make his stomach flutter. “Now you’re just talking nonsense.”

“M’not. It’s just a good haircut.”

Phil plucks the phone from Dan’s hands and shoves it in his pocket. “Let’s go film sims before I have a full on anxiety attack.” 

He’s kidding, but they do it anyway. They’ve been busy lately and Dan had been feeling rundown and the gaming channel is more than due for an update. 

Even during filming, Phil is nervous. Even in real time he can tell that his hands are fluttering around his face too much, still not used to having nary a splinge to correct, no sweeping fringe to fiddle back into place. He touches his mouth a lot, and his chin, and his ear. He feels like he’s got a giant bullseye on his forehead, a billboard with bright lights flashing the words _judge me_.

He also knows that he’s looking at Dan a lot. A _lot_. He’s gotten better at not caring about that. People like it, and he likes it, so why shouldn’t he do it? Especially today. Today the reassuring smile on Dan’s face helps ground him, reminding him of why he’s doing any of this in the first place.

When they’re done, Dan turns off the camera and reaches for Phil, pulling him up into a warm tight hug. Apropos of nothing, a hug like this is very uncharacteristic for them, but today it makes perfect sense. When Dan pulls back, Phil kisses him.

Phil’s hands are steady. Dan is right here, his arms wrapped snug around Phil’s shoulders. Dan is right here and he’s not going anywhere and Phil’s hands aren’t shaky right now. They have loving to do.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi @waveydnp on tumblr


End file.
